


Mystery of Human Chemistry

by thalialunacy



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-30
Updated: 2010-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:32:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thalialunacy/pseuds/thalialunacy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Karl's on the rebound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mystery of Human Chemistry

**Author's Note:**

> **Summary** : Karl is divorced. Chris is in love with him. You'd think it'd be easy to go from there, but sometimes the road of life is twisted.  
>  **Dedication** : Written for misfitdauphine, for her love of _High Fidelity_ , not to mention her sheer awesomeness. :fist bump:  
>  **Warnings** : Uh, none, weirdly enough.  
>  **Notes** : Anything you might recognize as amazingly funny comes from _High Fidelity_ , which is an outstanding movie (and an outstanding book, fwiw). A bit was inspired by that one infamous picture of Karl & Viggo, and I stole a name from _Bones_. Also, I don't wish to imply anything bad about Zoe's love-life, but I had to make it fit the scenario; my apologies to the lady and her man.

"Hey, Pine." Karl's voice rumbles through his voicemail, and Chris tucks the phone into his shoulder. "Just wanted to let you know, I won't be able to make it this week. I'm going out of town."

Chris pulls his Blackberry away from his ear and stares at it. If he didn't know better, that tone in Karl's voice…

He pushes a couple buttons. "Yes, dear," a slightly sibilant voice answers.

"Does Karl have a new woman?"

"Hello to you too."

"Fuck off."

Zach sighs. "No."

"Is that 'No I won't fuck off' or 'No Karl does not have a hot rebound coed on vacation with him right now'?"

"Is 'both' an acceptable answer?"

"Huh."

"…right."

"What? Oh. Yeah. We still on? Karl called out, obviously, but--"

"So did Zoe," Zach interrupts, and his tone means--

"Oh, fuck. Keith?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck. Well then she can't fucking cancel."

"We have to make sure she's there, in fact."

"We have to."

"Indeed."

\---

It's drinking and overpriced pub food and no fucking cameras and Chris is enjoying the monthly ritual from where he's sitting between Zach and Zoe until--

"Oi, does anybody know where Karl ran away to with his new bit of stuff?" Simon calls out, to everyone in general.

John waves his cell phone around. "Acapulco. Got a picture coming in now."

Chris shoots a look at Zach, who refuses to meet his eyes.

That fucker.

John makes a triumphant noise and passes around the phone, which garners whoops from everyone who sees it, and Chris's gut curls coldly in preparation.

Zoe gets it before him, and Chris sees her eyes widen. She hesitates, and loops her arm around his shoulders before handing the phone to him. "I'm sorry, baby," she says softly, and he wonders why she sounds even sadder than usual about his pathetic love-addled state--

But then he sees it.

His hand finds her knee and grips it, hard, while he stares at the picture-- at Karl-- at Karl forehead-to-forehead in a clearly non-platonic manner with a brown-skinned, grinning, _gorgeous_ man.

 _Man_.

"I didn't lie," Zach says quietly. "But I should've told you. I'm sorry."

Chris jerks his head up. "It's okay," he says automatically. He holds the phone out until someone takes it from him, though he has no idea who. "Not your fault. You were trying to shield me, I get it."

Zach still looks chagrined, but slightly mollified, and when John comes over and tugs at his hand he is distracted altogether, his face lighting up like a hairy Christmas tree.

This only adds to Chris feeling like he's been gutted. There's just this big space where his stomach, entrails, shakras, humours used to be, a gaping maw of aching otherness.

It, to be succinct, fucking sucks.

Then he looks down, and he notices Zoe's hand is on his, which is still on her knee. More like her thigh, now. He watches her thumb move up and down the pale, rough skin of his knuckles for a moment, then raises his gaze and meets her eyes.

\---

He sticks around and makes her breakfast the next morning. One, he has nowhere to go, metaphorically speaking, and two, he already knows his way around her kitchen.

The sex is new. The friendship is not.

\---

"Don't make that face," she says as she settles down onto the couch with her plate of eggs and toast.

"What face?"

"That face like you just cheated on someone."

Chris winces.

"If anybody should be making that face," she continues, "it's me."

Chris looks at her, shocked. "Wait, Zach told me you and Keith were--"

She waves a hand. "Oh, we are. It's over. It's done." She smiles at him, full of rue. "Tell that to this, though." And she taps her chest, left middle, twice.

Chris exhales, nodding. "I feel you."

Her laughter is sweet. "Oh, honey, do I know. Your face when you saw that picture, Jesus Christ. I felt like I'd kicked you in the balls with my pointe shoes on."

Another wince. "Vivid image."

"Yeah. And accurate."

"…yeah."

"But it doesn't mean you should feel guilty."

"Of course I shouldn't; he's off fucking some nubile young god. He probably has no idea that I--" He grimaces, then drops his head into his hands. "Whatever it is I do. Am. Etcetera."

Zoe puts down her toast and reaches over to rub the top of his head. "He's on the rebound, sugar. It's not serious. He's acting out some midlife post-divorce thing that for most people would mean sports cars but for Karl means shacking up with the most exotic piece of ass he can f--"

"Thank you," he interrupts dryly.

She smiles and pinches his ear lightly. "He's fucked up, Chris, is what I'm saying. And I think it's okay to be horny and fucked up at the same time. Just like I think it's okay for us to have fucked. Why should we be denied our basic human rights just because we fucked up our relationships?"

Chris laughs, a real laugh where his eyes crinkle, for the first time in days. "You think sex is a basic human right?'

"Hell yeah!" She throws her hands out and points her chin down definitively. "Yeah." Then she looks down. "I mean, why should I let some asshole come between me and a fuck?"

He thinks about this. He thinks about months, years, spent knowing he could never have what he really wanted. He thinks about Karl on vacation in Acapulco with a hot young thing.

Somewhere in all his thinking, Zoe has abandoned her plate and tucked up beside him, her chin on his shoulder. "It's just temporary, Chris," she murmurs. "You guys'll find each other."

Chris closes his eyes and strokes her hair. "No," he says quietly. "No, we won't."

\---

Next get-together is the Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel, only Karl is back from the tropics and apparently free as a bird. He chats Chris up just as usual, and Chris is devastated yet the familiar elation juices through him at Karl's mere presence. He hates himself, but deals with it.

Then John wanders over. "Hey, you two. Recovered from your sexploits yet?"

Chris shakes his head and tries not to smile--Zoe's a corker, okay, and he knows he will always think back on that night with great fondness--and Karl raises an eyebrow at him.

"Who you shagging now, Pine?"

When Chris just shrugs, John pulls his own mocking eyebrow. "You mean you didn't know? Chris here--" He claps Chris on the shoulder. "--climbed Mount Saldana."

Karl blinks. And blinks again.

"You slept with Zoe?"

Chris takes a drink of his Stella. "Yeah."

"I thought you didn't sleep with co-stars."

He puts the beer down and meets Karl's eyes. "Yeah, well, I thought you didn't sleep with boys."

John lets out a whistle.

Karl's eyes widen, then drop to his own drink. He pauses, gathering himself in his Karl way, then says: "He was 30. He wasn't that young."

Of course that's the part Karl thinks Chris is objecting to. Of course. Which means all this time, Chris thought Karl was silently rejecting Chris's gender, when really he was just rejecting… Chris.

He laughs without humor. "And I'm a fucking idiot."

A pregnant silence that follows is punctuated by John, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "I'm gonna… go be awkward somewhere else. Please don't kill each other. Or... fuck on any unclean surfaces."

Karl, the poor dear, looks thoroughly confused, glancing back from Chris to John and then at Chris again. "Wait, what?"

Chris shoves off the table and up. "Yeah, well, whatever. Learn something new every day, my mother says." He pulls out his pack and waves it around vaguely. "If you need me, I'll be outside."

The door doesn't even have the dignity to slam behind him.

\---

Ten minutes and a cigarette later, Chris is slightly ashamed of his actions. It's not Karl's fault. It's not anybody's fault. It's just the fucking cosmos and he needs to get over his own shit.

So when the door opens and laughter spills out into the alley, Chris knows it's Karl, and feels his face redden. He's expecting--nay, hoping for--a story, a joke, a bridge built from the easy, superficial, uncomplicated friendship they've always had.

"Yeah, okay, you are a fucking idiot."

Chris looks at him sideways, a new cigarette halfway to his mouth. That's _not_ what he was expecting. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

Chris gestures with his lighter before using it. "Yeah," he says on the first exhale, "but that doesn't mean it made any sense."

Then the silence is long enough that he looks over at Karl. Karl looks -- nervous. Chris's stupid heart thumps in his chest.

Karl's just looking at him. "Or am I the fucking idiot?"

Chris grunts. "For fuck's sake, Karl, spit it out. Reticence doesn't look good on you."

And then he waits. And Karl does, eventually. Chris has smoked half the cigarette by the time Karl's voice appears again, quiet and rough.

"Do you--want--" Karl looks down, shifts his stance. "Want this?"

Chris tells his stupid heart to shut the fuck up. He's tired of getting led around by his gut, when it so clearly often steers him in the direction of heartbreak, pain, misery, and loss. Turning his life into a bad pop song. Etc. "Want what, Karl? This friendship? The beer I just had? This life I've ended up with? Tonight is not a night for vaguaries, okay, so just--"

But then he realizes Karl has grabbed his biceps, pulled him close, and his heart fucking stops. "Do you want _me_?" Karl manages at last, his cheeks pink but his grip strong.

The cigarette smoke wafts up between them.

Chris's brain twirls and swirls with words, with ways he could answer. He's thought about this, thought of a million ways this could happen, thought of paragraphs of prose and pages of dialogue -- and yet. None of them fucking stand up.

Sometimes--and this is something he learned from watching Karl--it doesn't have to be huge words of significance and layers and SAT triumphs. Sometimes he can go with his gut, ignore his head, ignore his mental bullshit.

Sometimes, his gut doesn't have shit for brains.

So, "yes" is all he says. He says "yes" and it's better than a thousand ten-dollar words because Karl's face crinkles up into a mess of dimples and moles and hazel eyes. Which Chris keeps staring at until they get fuzzy and he wonders about it until he's startled by the feel of Karl's lips on his, and Jesus Christ he'd better get his shit together because--

Yeah, that's Karl's tongue in his mouth. Chris groans low in his gut and immediately reciprocates, his hands going unabashedly to grip at Karl's hips and pull their bodies together.

Karl breaks away, laughing breathlessly, as they shift helplessly against each other. "No, Chris," he says into Chris's cheek.

Chris feels the sting but then feels Karl's lips press against his skin, softly and plainly. Then again. With words between them. "No, not here." He presses even closer and suddenly the words are in Chris's ear, sounding like hot and sweaty promise. "There will be other nights to have sex in a dodgy alley, Pine."

Chris breathes in, breathes out. Breathes in. "There will?"

Karl leans back, eyes searching Chris's face. A dimple shows up. "Yeah, there will."

"Because I wouldn't…" Chris tugs restlessly at Karl's hips, can't help it, even as he forces his voice to be lighthearted, teasing. "I wouldn't want to get in the way of another… tête-à-tête, tropical or… otherwise…"

The dimple goes away, but Karl's lips still have a faint curve to them. "Ah, Grayson. He was lovely." Chris's stomach contracts. "He was lovely for a -- I believe you Yanks call it a rebound?"

Chris very carefully stares at the place Karl's eyebrow mole used to be. "Some people have more than one. Especially after… you know, marriage."

Karl shakes him, honest to God shakes him like a child, and Chris finally meets his eyes. "Pine."

"Yes."

"When have I ever been 'some people'?"

"Uh…" Chris licks his lips. "You have a point, there."

"Too right I do," Karl murmurs. Then he leans in again. And Chris welcomes him home.

 _  
**fin**   
_


End file.
